


letters

by mercuryhatter



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, oops canon deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-17
Updated: 2013-04-17
Packaged: 2017-12-08 17:37:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/764125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercuryhatter/pseuds/mercuryhatter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Two men, two among many, shirts bloodstained, and hands entwined. The shorter one, with his full head of hair, was curled slightly in towards the taller. They framed each other like parentheses.</i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <i>Musichetta was supposed to be their sentence.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	letters

**Author's Note:**

> two headcanons that it might be helpful to know: I usually write Enjolras and Musichetta as fairly close friends, and in this fic I adopted the scenario where Bossuet meets Joly while they're both seeing Musichetta.

Their plans are made long before they begin to tell anyone. It isn’t the most traditional of unions, and even if their friends aren’t the most traditional people themselves, they still worry. Well, Joly worries. Musichetta is just thinking practically, and Bossuet, true to character, isn’t concerned at all.

“It’s the simplest thing in the world,” he said of the matter. “We are all three in love. Our friends love all three of us. Why should there be any problem?”  
And in the end, he was right, although the news wasn’t so much announced as it was slowly doled out. Musichetta told Enjolras very early on— the two understood each other well, and it was the sort of thing one would tell the other. He had given her a warm smile, not as out of place on his face as one might assume from a distance, squeezed her hand, and said a soft “congratulations.” Joly told Jehan while fidgeting nervously under Bossuet’s comforting arm, and Jehan’s reaction was so explosively pleased that Bahorel and Courfeyrac were immediately alerted as well, whether they had intended to be or not. Courfeyrac told Combeferre, who mentioned it to Feuilly (and Enjolras, although the latter seemed surprised that he was the only one who had known). By the end of the night, Bahorel was leading toasts, which alerted Grantaire, and the secret became a fact.

It would be a lie to say that Bossuet did not gloat just a little bit to his partners over this success.

Jehan wanted to hold a proper wedding, at least, as proper as such a wedding could be, but Musichetta was elected to talk him gently down from this plan. None of the lovers wanted a fuss, and besides that there was simply too much going on allow time for big parties. Jehan was more than placated, however, when each came to him individually to beg him to read over their vows for them. It didn’t take much; the words were hardly out of their mouths before Jehan was consenting, clapping his hands and beaming happily.

_To my Eagle:_   
_If not for you I would only have half as many wings, and not nearly as much joy. I wish us never to be separate, so with this I vow my love and my soul to you for as long as you are willing to carry them._   
_To my beautiful Musichetta:_   
_I will take this opportunity to apologize again to you for being too caught up in your voice and your eyes to speak with you for all those weeks. Even if I am occasionally capable now of speaking to you without blushing and breaking whatever I am holding, I am and always shall be wild for you. I love you now and I will love you when I know every inch of you. I promise to stay with the both of you for as long as I am able._   
_your Jolllly._

_To my mistress’ friend:_   
_You are the reason I laugh so much whenever I am told that my luck is bad. How could that be so when I thought I’d met one love and then found that I had two— the second, if possible, even greater than the first? Musichetta is the love of my heart, but you are the love of my soul— and you are both the loves of my life._   
_To my irreplaceable mistress:_   
_Are there enough thanks in the world to repay you for all the happiness you’ve given me? If I could, I would gather them all and bring them each to you, for you deserve them. My greatest hope, in lieu of that lofty and metaphoric goal, is instead to bring a smile to your lips as often as I can manage, and to kiss them even more._   
_All of my love: Lesgles de Meaux_

_To my boys:_   
_I don’t know what power gave you both to me, but I will fight it tooth and nail if it ever tries to take you back. I love you both, my stars, until the end of time._   
_-Musichetta_

These missives were drafted and written and read and rewritten carefully onto their prettiest stationary, dated and kissed and sealed and bound together with ribbon. Musichetta kept them all in a box under the bed that was once Joly’s and now belonged to all of them. The letters were dated 11 April, 1832.

Musichetta finds them again on 10 June. Her black dress has been hot against her skin these past few days, and she holds a desert in her eyes.

Four days, exactly. Four days since her eyes had dried up to dust at the sight of two men in dirty clothes, laid out on the dirtier floor. Two men, two among many, shirts bloodstained, and hands entwined. The shorter one, with his full head of hair, was curled slightly in towards the taller. They framed each other like parentheses.

Musichetta was supposed to be their sentence.

She’d felt only anger then, that the universe had dared take them while leaving her alone, breathless and barely able to stand. And her flat— Joly’s flat— was covered in their shrapnel, fragments of them both left behind everywhere she looked. Medical texts, next to a compass whose needle followed the angle of their bed. A brown coat, patched with blue from a scarf that had been so equally hers and Joly’s that it was impossible to know who had owned it first. And now these letters in her hands, marked with their pens and touched with their kisses.

She lets the desert of her eyes turn to flood.

The ink bleeds.


End file.
